From Anthropology to Design:
So what is Design Ethnography….how does it relate/rate to Anthropology? And what do I personally know about the movers, shakers and founders in the field?
Before an assignment to look into this topic, exploring the history of Anthropology and its relation to Design Ethnography, the answer was…not a lot.
This short exploration, is exactly that…the jottings down of what I have come to understand of the history of academic and applied anthropology/anthropologists and how this feeds into the current practice and practitioners of Design Ethnography. I hope to use this as a springboard to reflect back to and build my understanding of the field, its influences and the people involved.
From Anthropology to Design - Looking at the flow between Academia and Design in relation to Applied Anthropology, Ethnography and Design Ethnography.
Excerpt of essay chapters:
History of Anthropology
“All humans are born with the potential to live thousands
of different lives, yet we end up having lived only one. One of
the central tasks of anthropology consists of giving accounts of
some of the other lives we could have led”
(Eriksen, 2004, p. 10)
In its simplest form the context of anthropology is the studying of people, it is a holistic science, which studies every piece of man, biology, psychology, history, archaeology, geology and linguistics. It notates, records and creates histories of incidents to show, share and understand the happenings that happen everyday globally.
Ethnography*, Design Ethnography* and relations with Academia
* Ethnography is a method/ology/process/written output that was created by/for anthropolog/ists/y and is used/modified by anthropologists/researchers/ ethnographers and practiced in the real world context. It is used to communicate ideas of/about individuals/ society/culture to peers/stakeholders/wider audiences.
“Ethnography is observing people’s behavior in their own environments so you can get a holistic understanding of their world—one that you can intuit on a deeply personal level.”
(Aiga & Cheskin, p. 5)
As clarified above, the physical act of doing ethnography, fieldwork, is to go out into the world and observe your ‘focus’ in the context of how they live and exist in their set culture, in doing so holistically viewing, and in time analysing, the situation to gain insight to what is there and what it says in about that context and time period.
Engagement, understanding and Academic Anthropology?
Will Academia accept or ridicule the notion of the altered methodology of ethnography for application within the sphere of design?
“As has often been said, if you want to understand what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do. Above all else, what anthropologists do is ethnography. “(Monagham and Just, 2000, p. 28)
“The embrace of participant observation by the design community has provided a source of tension between the disciplines that traditionally engaged in it and the new disciplines adapting it to their uses.” (Nel, 2009)
These two quotes help represent the current opposing forces that is academic anthropology and design ethnography. It is suggested by Marcus, that ethnography has three touchpoints in the professional careers of anthropologists. The first being the process of learning anthropology; as it is here that they encounter the key ethnographic texts which guide and give insight to what anthropologists do and what they know. The second is advancement; it is through the understanding and critique of these ethnographies that anthropologists can build on and participate in intellectual discussions. It must be understood that the writer of these ethnographies possess and are representing a unique viewpoint, here they have practical access to in the sphere of academia. The third is reputation – attached to the aforementioned ethnographies.
Ethnography is a tool that has launched careers and established reputations (1999, p. 25). Therefore in academia there is a lot of prestige attached to this process, and if there is “tradition and practice” in a field, there will be a lot of prejudice against new versions, or altered methodology. “For anthropologists, the surge of interest in ethnography is both a boon and a worry.” (Nel, 2009)
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